Aye, what's heaven for one may be hell for an other and vice versa.
However, the ultimate hell for me is if one is doomed to exist forever and it doesn't matter whether this eternal existence takes place in an environment like traditional heaven or hell. Or just like H. L. Mencken said: No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever...
Oh, and in my previous post make that "Gulag" = "hell". Just had too much Stalin today :(
Perhaps the way out of this conundrum would be to suggest that we do not exist forever; but our being is eternal.
Existence is conditioned by the finitude and contingency of life as we mortal humans experience it. Frequently, the configration -- of which we are all parts, participants, and observers -- is grating on us, if not positively painful.
Being is the larger context in which we live and move and have, not only our being, as the Scriptures tell us, but also our very earthly existence. Being is larger than our earthly existence, encompassing it. Being is Truth, existence its "shadow."
When I earlier said that human existence moves in a certain range, "in the stream," but that we cannot know either our beginning or our end in this stream, what I'd hoped to suggest was a corollary to this observation: Reality -- Being -- was here before we got into the stream of existence, and it will still be here after we've left the stream.
So how does this qualify us to say we know what the stream is? Or can even find out -- using the techniques of the scientific method, which says this problem does not exist in the first place?
Arguably, what we are does not find its root in existence. What we are is ultimately rooted in being -- in potentialites of which we are yet unaware. Perhaps existence is merely the reflection of being captured within a particular time reference....
Life, BMCDA, is such a wondrous blessing. How do you justify your "ultimate hell?"